Over, Under and Through

Today at the office, my office being my side deck that includes a can of paint, deck painting in slow progress, and my shell laden workbench. I noticed the leaves pushing their way open to feel the sun. I first saw them this morning and wanted to take a picture for social media, scrapping the idea to enjoy the moment. Later, that day I saw a post capturing that same moment and thought “if it wasn’t for the internet I would not know that someone else had that same thought”. I am sure many of us did today as it has been raining and cold for the past few days in the Adirondacks.

The social media cliff I have recently jumped off, with the start of a blog, has led me to think about the first generation to grow up solely on social media. I caught a piece by Anderson Cooper earlier this week about tweens. One of the points he made was that parents need to embrace social media in order to understand what they are going through and its lure.

It has been on my mind as my son is a tween. The book I chose off my father’s desk today was Where the Girls Are: Growing Up Female with the Mass Media by Susan J. Douglas, circa 1994. It hit the nail on the head discussing the idea how tweens are fighting to grow up as fast as those leaves want to bloom out of the branch and get to swaying. I watched the leaves as they contended with the breeze today and the pretty birds that weighed them down from time to time with the branch supporting them.

The branches connect to one another for support and continue to split off from each other. The trunk stays stoic like my dad’s chair in the sacred rock garden burial site for our two beloved cats and hamster which leads up to a tree tagged with my son’s initials painted in bold letters. He spray painted them in white. His first, middle and last initial one on top of the other, about a foot tall each. He was supposed to be painting a school project and I had only walked away from the project for a short time. Hellfire had erupted on my sacred garden with my father watching.

When I walked out onto the deck and saw it; I was horrified, upset and disappointed in his poor judgment. It was done and I expressed my displeasure and we later purchased camouflage paint as a remedy. The paint, purchased three years ago, never made it on the tree and today I noticed it has faded by nature’s healing powers. It blends in now and if you did not know it was there you would never know. We know, my dad knows. He saw the whole thing from his chair, a ringside seat if you will. He really has all he can do to keep track of the frat boy chipmunk who has taken up residency at the base of the tree. “Chippy” as we call him, just ran by as I was typing, too funny.

The tree reminded me that #Thistoshallpass, as it forgave him over time, so why can’t I. The leaves continue to push and expand to find their place on the branch, supported by all the branches that connect them to the trunk, rooted in the ground. My son will do the same as he continues to find his own identity with his foundation intact. We all will be there when the wind blows and he is taken by a pretty bird.

Yes. But a book from 1994 is too old. Social media, not to be confused by mass media, is a phenomenon first spawned by blogs, then turned into Facebook and Twitter and SnapChat and variations we haven’t even thought of. But the good news is, they haven’t yet, either.

Using SnapChat, or even Facebook, as an example: the minute us “old” people (parents),get on it, the kids flee in droves to something thetly believe their parents don’t even know about. I call it the Prodigy’ or ‘MySpace’ phenomenon.

Bottom line: like your son’s “trying on bad” by tagging a tree in sight of the house with his initials, and even “Chippy’s” drive-by appearances, it not only will pass. It is his marking where he is, where he’s been, a point on the graph that is his life’s trajectory. It was wrong for him to do, as he probably knew either before or after he did it, but the urge to mark something with your identity is as old as the now much revered and preserved graffitti of old we call ‘cave paintings’ or handprints.

It’s actually genius. It’s putting down an anchor for his future. It may someday fade to the point where it can’t be found, except by him. And his defying all and everyone in that one primal narcicistic act will put a smile on his face in remembering. And probably yours, and your dad’s as well. Everything passes. That’s why memories are precious. And tweens, despite appearences and behaviors, are observing, and thinking. And what they lack in experience they are desperate to feel.

Be disappointed in his poor judgment and choice. But be proud of his identifying that tree as his time portal.